Those bones don't have much opportunity for growth. Yes, you may dislike the concept of transit corridors being built for development, when it comes to the outer suburbs they don't have enough density to support transit as is.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I see much greater potential in the red line than the Dan patch line. It all depends on how willing Lakeville and Apple Valley are to building a whole new urban community. The majority of Apple Valley retail district could also easily be redeveloped. I think it's exciting, we will be able to see the birth of a new design of suburb that is not so heavily focused on car transit. Perhaps Lakeville will screw it up and allow more single family homes and a handful of townhouses, only time will tell.

Tcmetro wrote:I doubt that the Red Line Lakeville extension will attract any real TOD. The problem is that it is a secondary service (because everything is and will be designed for the car out there), and that it is regional (more useful for commuting than local needs). The idea that a bus with 15-30 min. frequency could impact development patterns is laughable.

We should remember that the Red Line attracts appx. 700-750 riders per day, and the CTIB funded expansion of express service is attracting less than 100. The initial phase of the project cost $160 million, and has not made any impact on mode share or congestion. Cedar Grove station project is going ahead, with little probable effect as well.

Extending the Red Line to Lakeville-181st St, Downtown Lakeville, or Downtown Farmington wouldn't achieve much. It would add significant bus hours that are likely to be used by very few. Instead connecting feeder routes from the Apple Valley Transit Station should be considered to provide connecting service to neighborhoods as opposed to highways, and service should be focused on span and coverage instead of frequency.

The other problem with expanding service in the area is the fact that Lakeville is part of Metro Transit and Farmington is not in the Transit Taxing District. Until these bureaucratic issues are resolved, I don't think that any bus service expansion will happen anytime soon.

Keep in mind that the Red line is intended to be built in phases. Already just east of the Apple Valley Transit station is a new residential urban community that is filling in slowly. Development along this corridor will be much slower given the Red line is being phased in slowly. The Cedar Grove station will cut travel times, the MOA transit station redevelopment will also enhance the rider experience as well. Year to date ridership is up 3.5%. It won't happen overnight, but long term the corridor will become very successful. eventually the Red line will have express buses into the downtown(s) along with the extension south to lakeville's Airport and it's industrial park. I think the bigger problem might be Lakeville not willing to require density along the corridor to ensure full development of the Red line, though I think they are aware that if they allow single family development they will be screwing themselves out of having BRT service to downtown throughout the day.

SamHartmen wrote:Keep in mind that the Red line is intended to be built in phases. Already just east of the Apple Valley Transit station is a new residential urban community that is filling in slowly. Development along this corridor will be much slower given the Red line is being phased in slowly. The Cedar Grove station will cut travel times, the MOA transit station redevelopment will also enhance the rider experience as well. Year to date ridership is up 3.5%. It won't happen overnight, but long term the corridor will become very successful. eventually the Red line will have express buses into the downtown(s) along with the extension south to lakeville's Airport and it's industrial park. I think the bigger problem might be Lakeville not willing to require density along the corridor to ensure full development of the Red line, though I think they are aware that if they allow single family development they will be screwing themselves out of having BRT service to downtown throughout the day.

Sam, you will quickly realize that most everyone on this forum hates the Red Line with an amazing amount of passion. Your points, while valid and very thoughtful, will simply fall on deaf ears. I will likely use the Red Line very little, but I've always supported it - and continue to, so I appreciate your passion and comments. Even if others may not.

TCmetro is right, low-frequency services like the Red Line will not change greenfield development patterns in any meaningful way. Look to the new 1000+ SFH subdivision just west of Cedar Ave (not too far from a future Red Line stop) to see this in action.

But my point is that if we are going to have these services, we can make existing places more viable for incremental intensification by connecting to their cores. Downtown Lakeville could easily absorb 5,000 new residents within a short walk of the downtown, and there are already thousands of residents in the downtown area. Similar to Osseo for the Blue Line Extension, or Elk River and Big Lake which are skipped over by Northstar.... If we connected to the existing walkable places, we'd be furthering the viability of those places. Whereas greenfield TOD basically just has transit (and regulatory requirements) guiding the land use pattern, it's merely one out of many benefits in an existing place like a Downtown Lakeville.

I'm honestly not at all familiar with downtown Lakeville -- but does extending service to somewhere like this (as opposed to more "in-line" stations) slow down the overall performance of the line to the point that it takes so long to get anywhere that people just give up?

SamHartmen wrote:Keep in mind that the Red line is intended to be built in phases. Already just east of the Apple Valley Transit station is a new residential urban community that is filling in slowly. Development along this corridor will be much slower given the Red line is being phased in slowly. The Cedar Grove station will cut travel times, the MOA transit station redevelopment will also enhance the rider experience as well. Year to date ridership is up 3.5%. It won't happen overnight, but long term the corridor will become very successful. eventually the Red line will have express buses into the downtown(s) along with the extension south to lakeville's Airport and it's industrial park. I think the bigger problem might be Lakeville not willing to require density along the corridor to ensure full development of the Red line, though I think they are aware that if they allow single family development they will be screwing themselves out of having BRT service to downtown throughout the day.

Sam, you will quickly realize that most everyone on this forum hates the Red Line with an amazing amount of passion. Your points, while valid and very thoughtful, will simply fall on deaf ears. I will likely use the Red Line very little, but I've always supported it - and continue to, so I appreciate your passion and comments. Even if others may not.

Thanks for the kind words and the tip. I will admit I don't use the Red line much myself, I really hate riding through that Cedar Grove offline station, once they fix that I plan on starting to use the line maybe once a month. I live downtown, so I don't have much need to go down that way besides the outlet mall.

I really find that corridor very fascinating. I think once we find out what the Arden hills TCAAP development plan and maybe the Ford plant development plan too, we will be able to get a better impression of what is possible along the red line. It reminds me of Dubai building an entire city from scratch! I'm sure nothing as breathtaking will come of this corridor, but I would think a community focused on development would be a bit more excited about the possibilities, even if they don't materialize.

What I see is redefining what a suburb means for the next generation.

and starting from scratch seems like a way to ensure design is not forced to work within the realm of the past.

MNdible wrote:I'm honestly not at all familiar with downtown Lakeville -- but does extending service to somewhere like this (as opposed to more "in-line" stations) slow down the overall performance of the line to the point that it takes so long to get anywhere that people just give up?

Yes, I would say so. I think eventually in the future a Lakeville downtown to Farmington downtown bus line could be developed to enhance the red line (and orange line) in the distant future. That would only be valuable once the red line had express routes into downtown Minneapolis and or St. Paul.

MNdible wrote:I'm honestly not at all familiar with downtown Lakeville -- but does extending service to somewhere like this (as opposed to more "in-line" stations) slow down the overall performance of the line to the point that it takes so long to get anywhere that people just give up?

Yes, I would say so. I think eventually in the future a Lakeville downtown to Farmington downtown bus line could be developed to enhance the red line (and orange line) in the distant future. That would only be valuable once the red line had express routes into downtown Minneapolis and or St. Paul.

So, the Red Line extension plans for stops at 195th and 215th Sts. The former is literally cornfield with large-lot SFH development planned or already under construction. The latter is intended to serve the Air Lake industrial park, but the stop would be at the far eastern end of it (and, even if they are decent-paying middle class jobs, they're not super-concentrated nor served by decent walking or biking infrastructure).

I may or may not have thought a bit about a local transit system in Lakeville for no reason but to shout into the void. If I had to update it, I'd just route the Red Line toward downtown Lakeville at CR50 as mattaudio suggests. Maybe a future station at Aronson Park (a nice little destination with a good number of townhome/apartments north of it) could work. Terminating the line downtown instead of in the middle of nowhere by more cornfields and with only a few hundred jobs within a 5-10 minute walk of that 215th St station is a not-great idea for all-day, reasonably-frequent transit. Google says it's literally an extra minute to get to downtown Lakeville by car rather than 215th St when coming from further north on Cedar, so it's not a huge time-adder for the route. I know it's fantasy, but a frequent local route connecting downtown to Air Lake (heck, maybe even over to LNHS on the other side) would get people from that downtown node to jobs spread out along other arteries. It also then provides that option to existing residents, and if my recollection of downtown's demographics still hold true, they're more likely to need a bus route like this than hypothetical residents of new construction.

If your goal is to build suburbs that look like the pictures above, and I generally agree, I just don't know why we'd want to start from scratch. Suburbs like Lakeville see greenfield development pretty narrowly (also lol at how they think "markets" work). Downtown has a grid, jobs, residents, cultural destinations. It may not look exactly like the pictures you posted but it's way closer, and I think the city and its residents would be more open to the idea of slowly retrofitting public spaces and allowing more mixed-uses/intensification in the only area in town where that already exists. The mixed-use senior apartment building is one example (though I really get the sense that people are okay with apartments for seniors but will fight density built for anyone else). Anyway. In the grand scheme of things I'm not sure I'd spend CTIB money extending the Red Line before basically any already-studied urban bus route, but that money is intended to be spent regionally. And, you could still get your TOD vision in the corn fields at a 195th St Station anyway.

Rode the Red Line today for no particular reason. Couple observations:

The smaller stations finally have ticket vending machines!

There are no benches in the indoor waiting area, only outside.

The bus I took didn't even pull up to the indoor waiting area, instead it pulled up short and left the back door next to the grass. I'd imagine it's much quicker to do it this way, so it makes sense. Still, kinda sucks to see the money spent on those little features go to waste.

EOst wrote:Hard to see a great future for the Red Line if it doesn't go to downtown Minneapolis, whether on 62/35W or mixed traffic on Cedar (with aBRT stations).

Seems like the next logical step for the Red Line besides adding stations between Cedar Grove and Apple Valley. Instead they're talking about extending it to Lakeville assuming development happens along that stretch of Cedar.

Extend it to downtown with stops at 66th/Cedar, Bloomington/62, Portland/62, and then share stations with the Orange Line the rest of the way. Would be a nice reliever for the 477 and while there could be issues with competing for riders with the Blue Line, keep the frequency the same as it is now (higher frequency, but not enough to be considered in the high frequency network).

Fact: not one single bus route operates through MOA Station.
It is a terminal.
It is the single busiest transit station in the entire region. It is designed for making transfers between routes.
It takes several minutes to get in and out of, which would severely impact running times for any hypothetical through-route service. Even if such a through-route service did exist, it would likely "hold" at MOA for several minutes to accommodate timed transfers and such.
Even in the redesigned MOA Station, all of these things will remain true (albeit with improved waiting areas, slightly faster entry/exit).

The Red Line is never going to make a stop at MOA and continue onward. Not going to happen.

So when you say you want Red Line to continue downtown, what you're really saying is that you want an express (or BRT?) bus service to operate between MOA and downtown. Now how likely is that to happen?

twincitizen wrote:Fact: not one single bus route operates through MOA Station.
It is a terminal. It is the busiest single transit station in the entire region. It takes several minutes to get in and out of, which would severely impact running times for any hypothetical through-route service. Even if such a through-route service did exist, it would likely "hold" at MOA for several minutes to accommodate timed transfers and such.

The Red Line is never going to stop at MOA and continue onward. Not going to happen.

So just know that when you say you want Red Line to continue downtown, what you're really saying is that you want a separate service express bus route to operate between MOA and downtown. Now how likely is that to happen?

Actually, with the upgrades they'll be starting on shortly, a through-route will be far more doable. Not that it will - but the wait times you mention are the exact reasons the project is moving forward.

twincitizen wrote:The Red Line is never going to stop at MOA and continue onward. Not going to happen.

I'll bet you anything that a through-routed Red Line, even with all the delays around MoA and even with hold time for transfers, would still be significantly faster than transferring to the Blue Line, waiting five minutes for it to head out, and then riding it all the way downtown.

twincitizen wrote:The Red Line is never going to stop at MOA and continue onward. Not going to happen.

I'll bet you anything that a through-routed Red Line, even with all the delays around MoA and even with hold time for transfers, would still be significantly faster than transferring to the Blue Line, waiting five minutes for it to head out, and then riding it all the way downtown.

Agreed. It takes 4 minutes just to get between Mall of America and 28th Avenue stations. If light rail is chosen for Riverview I pray that they will fix this somehow.

Went to Apple Valley over the weekend to see some friends and NB MN77 was closed/detoured for the placement of the new footbridge to the center station. It was pretty cool to see two cranes lifting it into place.

The problem with being an introvert online is that no one knows you're just hanging out and listening.